Many people have been crying themselves hoarse about the beef ban, which is akin to painting themselves into a corner. Their approach tries to exploit the saying ‘The crying baby gets the most milk’. Where educated people should use rationale and logic in their arguments, the tendency to whip up unnecessary emotions on this beef issue is somewhat misplaced. Christians eating beef in India was after their conversion to the essentially foreign religion. By the same code, the fad of vegetarianism was also started in the West more than a decade ago. So why do we not follow that? Moreover, all religions declare that killing any animal – not only the cow – is criminal. Then why do we encourage it? Is it to prove that man is the superior animal, and for his protein needs other animals should die?
Let us rationally look at the issue. With the recent focus on global warming, it was found that the emissions from bovine animals, grown to support the meat-eating habits of the world, account for 15 percent of all greenhouse gases. So if we want to control global warming, should we not embrace vegetarianism? Now let us look at the opposite argument.
In India, the number of four-legged animals is equal to or possibly exceeds the human population. We also have a thriving leather industry that contributes substantially to our earnings of foreign exchange. This industry needs hides to maintain production. Unless we kill animals, we cannot get their hides. When we do get the hides, what should be done with the animals’ meat? Throw it away! But that is stupid considering a majority of our people is on a protein diet. Someone has to eat that meat. That is the economics of meat-eating.
Lastly, let us look at combating the regulations of banning beef. One way is to fight it in the courts on the right-to-life platform. The other way is to give up eating meat in the short term. The government itself will ask you to eat meat in a decade or so because the number of four-legged animals will have grown so much they will come to everyone’s door in search of food. When we cannot give our citizens food and have to enact a Food Security Bill, how will our government get food to give these animals?
There are examples of bans on killing animals not working elsewhere in the world. In Australia, the ban on killing of kangaroos had boomeranged because they multiplied so much that they became a hazard; they caused more accidents on Australia’s highways and marauded farm harvests. The same was seen in Africa, where after the killing of elephants was banned, they multiplied so much that the government there had to systematically cull them with annual quotas. Thus, there are ways to combat any situation by simply applying one’s educated mind for the good of society, and not the other way.
